Syndicate

Home » Likudist Israel Damned For Pursuing Its Version Of Manifest Destiny

Likudist Israel Damned For Pursuing Its Version Of Manifest Destiny

December 29, 2016 - 10:50pm  grant

Obama and Kerry Get It Right at the Last Minute

by:

John Grant

In 20 days, the Twitter King will be seated in Harry Truman’s chair. The buck will stop with him. Mr. Trump regularly Tweets the traditional code phrases that could be said to characterize the pacification of Native American people. America First and Peace Through Strength. (He doesn't mention the phrase collateral damage.) These phrases amount to the marching orders in Likudist Israel. The only way Netanyahu’s right wing Israeli government will allow Palestinians even a remote semblance of self-rule and dignity is if they concede they have lost everything and, thus, have nothing left to lose by caving in to the Israeli juggernaut.

Mr. Trump has used similar rhetoric to try to convince poor, inner city African Americans to vote for him. Your inner cities are a disaster, he’d say. There’s violence everywhere. You walk down the street and get shot. “What do you have to lose!?” What do you have to lose by throwing in the towel and kissing my pinkie ring? I'm only being partially satiric when I imagine his plan is to re-establish the Plantation System, using his charm to convince everyone it’ll work this time. It'll be different. You’ll see! Trust me.

The bottom line issue is dignity. Do you escalate and continue to break a people’s back to bring them to heel, or do you recognize the injustices that have occurred -- that you may have committed -- and create a structure that facilitates real justice and peaceful co-existence? Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu give no evidence that they see the latter as important for people they deem inconvenient and superfluous to their dreams of greatness.

If I heard him correctly, Mr. Netanyahu blamed the League of Nations for getting it all wrong from the beginning with its post-WWI Palestine Mandate. For Mr. Netanyahu, it’s always someone else’s fault. In this case, he’s saying it was the fault of British Colonialism and the world. It's funny that, not unlike my line here, he’s suggesting everything went awry with decisions made in the first half of the 20th century. Instead of historic decisions wronging the Palestinians, he suggests history wronged the Jews and Israel. One thing we’ve learned is that there were a lot of moral crimes committed under the relentless drive of European Colonialism and it’s offspring, post-WWII American Imperialism. One reaction to these historic lessons is the disdain leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu show for overarching, international bodies like the League Of Nations and the United Nations. If they have the power and the will, their national Manifest Destiny will not be thwarted.

Jess Guh's Posts

As a queer woman, when it comes to film, I fulfill pretty much all of the stereotypes. I don’t really like action films. I am underwhelmed by special effects and action sequences. As my wife once complained, “All the movies you like… nothing happens in them.” My undergraduate...